An essay concerning a post-Snowden utopia: Stop the surveillance state

One year from the NSA leaks, rights groups continue to speak out.

It's been almost a year since the June 5, 2013 revelation that the US government was collecting, in bulk, the telephone metadata of every telephone call to and from the United States. The National Security Agency leaks by whistleblower Edward Snowden would eventually expose surveillance programs, including Prism, XKeyscore, Tempora, and Muscular.

Yet despite the global outrage, the US electronic surveillance state continues unabated a year after Snowden became a household name. All the while, just one piece of reform legislation cleared the US House, and that legislation allows the telephone snooping to continue, with a few added caveats, despite a federal judge ruling that the nation's founders would be "aghast" at the program.

Further Reading

"The greatest fear that I have is that nothing will change," Snowden said in a recent interview. He remains holed up in Russia and faces espionage charges if he returns to the United States.

Thursday marks an exact year from Snowden's first revelation appearing in the Guardian. That leak, and subsequent ones, have underscored that the United States is undertaking the biggest surveillance campaign the world has ever seen from a democratic society.

Changing the NSA policies is unlikely as long as the Obama administration and its successors continue playing the terror card, and the public acquiesces and turns a blind eye. After all, the realpolitik rules. Perhaps one day the government's policy will allow the free flow of electronic communication without Big Brother listening.

This isn't just the dream of the card-carrying members of the American Civil Liberties Union, which just published a white paper on reforms it says are needed to commemorate Snowden's first leak. One reform recommendation pokes at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves some elements of the National Security Agency's snooping practices in closed-door sessions. It's a court some might mock if it were in, say, Venezuela, but it rules the land in the United States.

"Americans' constitutional rights should never be argued and interpreted away behind closed doors," is one ACLU recommendation.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also notes that the US government is exaggerating when it talks about 54 terror attacks being dissolved and of suggestions that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks could have been averted had the spying programs been in place. "As we approach the one year anniversary, it’s time to call out the key claims that have been thoroughly debunked and insist that the NSA apologists retire them," the EFF said. The EFF provides a laundry list of debunking points here.

Further, an entire cottage industry of private innovators is working toward the goal of a secure internet, largely out of distrust of the US government and other intruders. And you know things are bad when Big Business gets involved and sides against the government.

Media giant Google announced Tuesday that it is developing a Web-based mail encryption tool, still in its alpha stage. And Microsoft's general counsel, Brad Smith, also offered up a five-point plan toward ending the surveillance state.

It was 225 years ago this Sunday that James Madison stood up in the first Congress and proposed the Bill of Rights, including what became the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution. He built on English law and colonial experience to preserve for future generations the right of people to be secure from unreasonable government searches. But by definition it is up to our own generation to preserve this fundamental constitutional protection.

Given the vast scope of snooping Snowden has revealed and US lawmakers' acceptance of it, a surveillance-free Internet utopia seems far-fetched.

David Kravets / The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper.